FUN PEOPLE AND PLACES IN HONG KONG

Here in Hong Kong we have eight young sister missionaries and two elders who work with our branch as well as the other Philippine branches that meet on Sunday.  They are all from the Philippines and are really wonderful.  The only problem is that 5 of the sisters and one of the elders go home in two weeks and there is only one sister coming anytime soon. 

 

This is Elder Dugalog and Elder Aranis.  They take care of the sacrament every day.  Sometimes there are other men there to help, but these two are the stalwarts.  I love these two Elders.

 

 

 

The sister missionaries are assigned a certain day to help our Families so we have a different pair every day.  They are so cheerful and happy to be around!  We are sad so many are leaving us!

 

 

From David:



"We nearly always have new investigators (we call them visitors) at church every day.  Today we had three.  Many that attend our branch were baptized here.  It is interesting that many of our sister members have been in HK for many years (some 25+).  Some have worked as maids in the Middle East.  One just left for Toronto, Canada.  One absolutely amazing woman is leaving in two weeks for the Philippines for good I hope.  She has 4 children there.  We will greatly miss her.  Many are separated from husbands who are unfaithful to them.  Divorce is not allowed in the Philippines so they are stuck between a rock and a hard place.  And so it goes.  But this is a fruitful place for missionary work. 

 

We were at the temple last week and the Shift Coordinator there, a Brother Lam, saw my name tag and wondered if I knew an Elder Towers who taught him the Gospel in 1962.  I was happy to say that I am his brother!  a sweet experience for me.  I wish Gary was alive to see the progress that has been made here since he was a missionary."

 
Another Relief Society Birthday Party!  Every family has done such an amazing job of preparing and carrying out the celebration!  This Happy Thursday Family even made little corsages for all of us!
The girl right behind David is the one going home to her four children.  She planned the whole evening.

 All these women were so excited to get awards!  They all did the voting so it was fun.

 

Our Saturday Family has about 100 sisters so we are divided up into 4 Family Home Evening groups for our FHE Activities the 4th week.  Our group is the Heleman Group.  Here is a picture of a few of us.

This is a sister who is 32 years old and has four children in the Philippines.  She is so excited about accomplishing goals in Young Women's Personal Progress.  One of her goals has been to learn to play the guitar.  Today she played and sang I Need Thee Every Hour for me so I could sign it off.  As I listened to her heartfelt song, it brought tears to my eyes.

This is Alyana, our one and only Primary member.  Her parents both work here in Hong Kong.  Nancy is not her mom.  She just wanted to be in the picture!

 

This is Labor Day weekend which is when The Chinese honor their ancestors.....it's like our Memorial Day....and it's called Ching Ming.  We went to a temple nearby that houses 3 religions in one....Taos, Confucius and Buddhist.  It was decorated so beautifully.  Many people were there burning incense and worshipping.  

 

 

 

 

After that we visited a really pretty garden right in the middle of the city.  It was filled with unusual bonsai trees, amazing rocks, and Chinese buildings.  We decided to eat lunch at the garden in a beautiful restaurant under a waterfall.    The food was all vegetarian grown by the Nuns in the Nunnery next to the gardens.  We had all kinds of fungus.  I wish I could remember all the mushroom names.  We had mushroom and lychee soup, mushrooms and tofu something, termite mushrooms with fresh baby asparagus and red peppers (so beautiful), deep fried pumpkin wedges with the shell still on,(delicious!) bean curd with bok choy, bean sprout and baby mushroom egg rolls, and to drink…..Fresh Winter Spring… a mix of fresh pineapple, star fruit and guava juice.  Dessert was fresh cantaloupe and slices of a fruit we don't know the name of.

 

This is Elder and Sister Pack who are the office couple for the Hong Kong Mission.  They help us administer our Saturday Group.